The business of media and entertainment

Smoke & Mirrors invests in AmberFin iCR technology

IBC2011 saw AmberFin ink a euro six-figure deal with post and VFX company Smoke & Mirrors, which is implementing AmberFin’s iCR file-based content ingest and transcoding system at its London facility, writes Carolyn Giardina.

In addition to transcoding and playback functionality, the system will include AmberFin’s new Unified Quality Control, which combines automation with human interaction to provide QC for ingest and transcoding operations.

Smoke & Mirrors’ London facility is in expansion mode, with an additional 4,000 sq ft. of space. CTO Mark Wildig (pictured here, second from right, with, L to R, Smoke & Mirrors’ Graeme Baker and AmberFin’s Paula Bargery and Jeremy Deaner) noted that the purchase would allow the company to “work smarter” by “making the process faster, more efficient and repeatable.”

For AmberFin, the deal represents growth in the post-production market, as its more traditional sectors are broadcasters and film studios.

“Like all companies, we are starting to receive a significant percentage of master material as files rather than tapes, so having a reliable, easy to use file QC system is extremely important,” said TVT’s managing director Kim Thesiger. “Having a unified interface for tape and file QC is also important from a training perspective. Finally, we’re also planning to use AmberFin UQC to auto-QC outgoing playout and VoD files to ensure that transcoding glitches and file copy errors are caught before the file reaches the client.”